[hackuser]

I don't agree: Back then I was a very knowledgable baseball fan (I probably could have named almost every player on every team) and I didn't know. I heard occasional rumors but nothing more persuasive than that, and nothing at all which indicated, in any convincing way, how widespread it was. When Jose Conseco talked about it, he was ridiculed as a nutcase and shunned (as expected; see my comment above about loyalty).

I remember when home runs and offense increased dramatically, to record levels, and everyone was saying that the ball was juiced - nobody suspected it was the players who were juiced.

[notvladputin]

In 1991, the commissioner tried to institute a policy banning steroids. He didn't have the authority, so it was no different than if I tried to write that. But it's a clear indication that MLB was aware of the steroid problem and tried taking a small step to fix it.

Regarding the "players being juiced", it's never been shown that juiced players performed better. There have been a number of studies comparing players who were caught using PEDs, before and after, comparing to clean players, etc. None of them show any indication that taking steroids helped players perform better on the field.

If you look at the power-on-contact or ISO of players across periods (the 90s, 00s, current game), you find that there is just as much power on contact in the game now as before. The different is strikeouts, which is clearly tied to strike zone enforcement and some other tradeoffs hitters are making now that teams understand strikeouts are fine if you have power.

I apologize if my tone has some frustration in it, but my pet peeve is people saying that steroids = strength = McGwire hit ball far. The reality is far more nuanced, and if you are able to come into the analyses without preconceived conclusions, it's pretty clear that the 'steroid slugger' era happened to overlap with the power era, but it does not appear to have driven the higher rate of home runs and offense during the time.

[hackuser]

I don't know about studies, but the evidence is strong. Let's look at home runs:

* Since 1920 [1], excluding the PED era, only twice have players hit 60 or more home runs in a season and both barely passed the threshold: Babe Ruth hit 60 in 1927 and Roger Maris hit 61 in 1961.

* In the 4 years from 1998 to 2001, the feat was accomplished 6 times by 3 different players (2 very strongly associated with PEDs, the other widely supsected of it), many blowing away the former threshold, hitting 73, 70, 66, 65, 64, and 63 home runs.

* Since PEDs were banned in baseball, only one player has hit more than 55 home runs in a season.

[1] 1920 is when hitters embraced the modern strategy of trying to hit home runs, led by innovator Babe Ruth. Before that, a period called the 'Dead Ball Era', they generally just tried to get any hit they could and home runs were much more rare. Also, there were technological and rule changes which may have facillitated home run hitting. Before 1919 players regularly led the league with 10-15 home runs; in 1919 Ruth hit 29, a record at the time and more than most entire teams hit; in 1920 he hit 54.

[notvladputin]

The problem with this type of evidence is that it assumes the single change in the game was the presence or absence of steroids. To learn more from the data, check out the references I included at the bottom. The TL;DR is that there is no compelling statistical evidence that suggests steroids impacted homers, or offense in general.

The facile argument fails to address the fact that the game underwent expansion (weakening the average pitcher). The strike zone was changed a number of times (if you normalize for strikeout rate, the power in today's MLB is the same as in the 90s). Umpires got a lot better once PitchFX was able provide them feedback. (Lots were let go as well). Colorado started using a humidor, reducing home runs at the greatest hitters park of all time.

There's not really any way of knowing who did or did not use. MLB and mainstream sports media "strongly suspected" PED usage is closer to HUAC findings than real evidence. Also, it doesn't acknowledge the fact that a lot of pitchers were found using PEDs.

In short, it's incredibly facile to look at some superficial stats and hints of suspicion in order to reach the "steroids = homers" conclusion. But when you look at the underlying component numbers and adjust for the changing environment in the game, there is no evidence to support that conclusion. (That does not mean steroids had no effect, just that we cannot detect them with our best efforts.)

Here's an incredibly strong counter argument from Joe Sheehan's paywalled newsletter [I added it to pastebin for reference, I doubt Joe will mind]. http://pastebin.com/DXW0HSSt

Dan Szymborski is one of the top baseball data analysts in the country. From [0] (paywall) "Despite the rhetoric surrounding PEDs, players caught for steroid/testosterone use do not show a pattern of overperforming their projections in the years leading up to the drug suspension or a pattern of underperforming their projections in the years after a drug suspension."

In layman's terms, if all you knew about players the past 10-15 years was their past OPS+ and whether they were busted for steroids -- now or at any time in the past -- it appears the PEDs had no noticeable effect on the projection of their future OPS+.

What this means is that, even with the knowledge of what outliers such as Barry Bonds accomplished while allegedly using performance-enhancing drugs, as a whole, there's extremely limited evidence of a significant effect on statistics of the drug users as whole. And without double-blind research studies of PED use among major leaguers and/or detailed information of what players are using, all we have to go by so far is the bottom-line results.

Now, none of this should be taken as endorsing the idea that MLB should simply open the floodgates and allow players to do whatever they want. Instituting drug testing is a very good thing for the sport -- but that improvement is for reasons other than the record books, such as the long-term health of players and the public trust. As far as the record books being tainted by PED use, well, it appears there isn't much evidence of that."

[0] http://insider.espn.go.com/mlb/insider/story/_/id/10922627/m...